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But what makes you think the Flemings are going to be needing a new butler? You going to poison the one they have?" "The one they have has been exceeding his duties," Rand said. "He was supposed to clean the pistol-collection. Not content with that, he's been cleaning it out. I know it was the butler."

Rand began to suspect that Goode might be just another such self-righteous, opinionated, egotistical windbag. Such men could be dangerous, were usually quite unscrupulous, and were almost always unpleasant to deal with. "Then why," the lawyer demanded, "did Mrs. Fleming employ you?" "Well, as you know," Rand began, "the Fleming pistol-collection, now the joint property of Mrs.

I am informed that, while in the employ of this family, you accepted a retainer from another party to investigate the death of Arnold Rivers." "That's correct," Rand informed him. Then he turned to Gladys. "Just for the record, Mrs. Fleming, do you recall any stipulation to the effect that the business of handling this pistol-collection should have the exclusive attention of my agency?

You can imagine how horrible that was for her; it was days before she was over the shock. So she'll be just as glad as anybody to see the last of the pistol-collection." Through the recital, Rand had sat silently, toying with the ivory-handled Italian Fascist dagger-of-honor that was doing duty as a letter-opener on his desk.

"Well, I'm very busy, at the moment, Mr. Goode," Rand regretted. "There have been some rather deplorable developments here, lately. The butler, Walters, has been arrested for larceny. It seems that since Mr. Fleming's death, he has been systematically looting the pistol-collection. I'm trying to get things straightened out, now." "Good heavens!" Goode was considerably shaken.

He opened his brief case and extracted a sheet of paper, handing it to Rand. "You can file this; I'll stand back of it." Rand looked at the typed and signed statement to the effect that Carl Gwinnett agreed to pay the sum of fifteen thousand dollars for the Lane Fleming pistol-collection, in its entirety, within thirty days of date. That was an average of six dollars a pistol.

"Our client," he said, "wants two jobs done on one fee. Getting the pistol-collection sold is one job. Exploring the whys and wherefores of that quote accident unquote is the other. She has a hunch, and probably nothing much better, that there's something sour about the accident. She expects me to find evidence to that effect while I'm at Rosemont, going over the collection.

There had been a time, not too long ago, when a pistol-collection with an average value of six dollars, particularly one as large as the Fleming collection, had been something unusual. For one thing, arms values had increased sharply in the meantime. For another, Lane Fleming had kept his collection clean of the two-dollar items which dragged down so many collectors' average values.